NOT PART OF RESTAURANT ROW – After Arthur Pappas built Mayflower Shops at 326-330 Main Street in Hyannis, he turned down inquiries to lease the space to restaurants. Ironically, the building carries the name of a popular dining place, the Mayflower Restaurant.

Specialty food shop closes on Main Street, Hyannis

Arthur Pappas of Cotuit wanted to be part of the rebirth of Main Street, Hyannis. He opened his Orexi speciality food store at the corner of Barnstable Road and Main Street, then built a retail building to lease out just to the east at 326-330 Main St.

At the public opening of Mayflower Shops last April, the building’s architect, Peter Brown, said, “This is an act of courage on Arthur Pappas’ part.”

But courage will only take you so far, and this week Pappas told the Patriot that he will not open the food store and is looking for someone to lease that space and the retail building.

“Unfortunately, we just could not get it to a point where it would sustain itself,” Pappas said of Orexi. “It never got to the point where you could hire a couple of people to run it. I don’t know if it was the economy, the location, the type of products we were selling.”

Those who sampled the Mediterranean products arrayed on the shelves of Orexi weren’t the problem.

“Everybody who came into the store thought it was a great store and enjoyed the products,” Pappas said. “The number of people who came to the store were not sufficient.”

Pappas and his two sons “made sure the prices, the markups were very little,” he said. “We were trying to get people accustomed to trying and enjoying.”

Looking back, Pappas said, “I see that perhaps I anticipated the recovery much sooner than it looks like it’s coming. I still see a lot of space empty, including mine. It isn’t just me.”

Pappas puts most of the onus a few steps above Main Street.

“I would say it’s the national economy,” he said. “If the national economy picks up, Main Street picks up.”

Nevertheless, he has some advice for the shopping strand.

“Main Street has become nothing but a place where people go eat, for the most part,” he said. “That says it’s more of a tourist, summer (economy). All those restaurants cannot possibly survive in winter.”

In fact, Pappas said, “there were a lot of inquires for the new building I put up there for restaurants. It just didn’t make sense to me. To me, this end of the street reflected more or less a business rather than tourist area.”

Anyone interested in leasing either property can call the Pappas Family Realty Corporation at 508-428-7319.